Virtualizing Operating System for Networked Embedded Systems

Speaker:	Dr. Lin GU
		Department of Computer Science
		University of Virginia

Title:		"Virtualizing Operating System for Networked Embedded
		 Systems"

Date:		Monday, 12 March 2007

Time:		4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:		Lecture Theatre F
		(Leung Yat Sing Lecture Theatre, near lift nos. 25/26)
		HKUST

Abstract:

Traditionally, privileged-execution hardware is required for implementing
OS protection (preventing applications from compromising the OS), and
virtual address translation hardware is required for virtual memory. Many
microcontrollers used in very-low-power embedded systems, however, lack
these hardware features. Hence, they had to use simple operating systems
without OS protection or virtual memory, giving rise to many difficulties
in programming and maintaining such systems.

In this talk, I will present a new OS kernel, the t-kernel, which
overcomes this limit. I will first briefly introduce my research on a
surveillance sensor network sponsored by DARPA, and explain why OS
protection and virtual memory are needed in networked embedded systems.
Then I will present how the t-kernel uses pure software methods to
efficiently implement OS protection and virtual memory. Moreover, the
implementation and evaluation of the t-kernel on MICA2 motes show that,
though computational tasks slow down, typical applications do not
experience noticeable performance degradation when running the t-kernel.


*****************
Biography:

Dr. Lin GU receives his Doctoral Degree in Computer Science at the
University of Virginia. Centering on networked embedded systems, his
research interest includes operation system design, energy efficient
computing, and hardware design. He is a major contributor to a series of
surveillance wireless sensor networks in DARPA's NEST project. He wrote a
new OS kernel (t-kernel) to overcome the limitations of current sensor
network operating systems, such as TinyOS. He designed radio-triggered
wake-up hardware for power management. Prior to that, Lin GU received B.S.
and M.S. in Computer Science from Fudan University and Peking University,
respectively, and conducted research in computer networks, security, and
text classification.